Cairo -

“Oh, our ruler in emergency, all the people are immersed in your oppression.” That phrase was one of the famous chants of members of the Kefaya movement in Egypt (2004-2010), which came from a group of forces opposed to the late President Hosni Mubarak, as an expression of the Egyptians’ yearning for change, under his rule. Which has not been without a day of the existence of the state of emergency.

Modern Egyptian history says that for most of the last century, the country was governed by emergency, whether under colonialism and royal rule, or under military rule, with the exception of a few years.

At the beginning of the year of the revolution 2011, the Egyptians breathed a sigh of relief after the abolition of the state of emergency, and the revival of hopes for natural rule and a modern state, but the winds came with what the revolution did not desire, so the state of emergency was again imposed on the Egyptians again in April 2017 for 5 years, after it was imposed intermittently For brief times before that.

From its name, the state of emergency appears to be an exception to the rule as a case that deals with an “emergency” for normal life, but the exception has been the rule in Egypt over the past years, and despite that, jurists hope that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s announcement to stop the state of emergency will represent a real beginning to improve the conditions of freedoms in the country.

While observers say that the state of emergency has turned into a fixed rule in laws restricting freedoms, some have also argued about the legality of implementing this abolition against detainees.

How do detainees benefit?

In this context, human rights lawyer Khaled Ali explained that defendants in political cases whose trials are still ongoing will not benefit from the abolition of emergency, except for those who have not yet been referred to trial, according to Articles 19 and 20 of the State of Emergency Law No. 162 of 1958.

The lawyer and the former presidential candidate stated, in a post on his Facebook page, that the cases that are still in the investigations and the prosecution has not issued a decision to refer them to trial, when referred, the trial will be before the ordinary judiciary, as for the cases in which decisions were issued under the state of emergency to refer them to the State Security Court emergency, it will remain in the hands of this court and the emergency law will apply.

This same last rule applies to cases in which the military ruler refused to ratify the judgments issued, and decided to retry them, and the trial will be repeated before the emergency courts, in accordance with the procedures of the emergency law.

In turn, the lawyer specializing in detainees' affairs, Ahmed Helmy, said that the defendants' lawyers will have no choice but to challenge the unconstitutionality in the upcoming sessions in the texts that decide the continuation of the trial of the defendants before the Supreme State Security Courts in accordance with the emergency law, expressing his belief that the court is unlikely to respond to the appeals.

Regarding the suffering of the detainees and their lawyers from the state of emergency, lawyer Osama Bayoumi says that the greatest suffering that lawyers and prisoners faced in the course of trials was the inability to appeal the rulings, whatever they were, and the highest hopes were to accept a grievance submitted by the defendants’ lawyer to the military governor, who considers it according to what he sees, Whether by cancellation, mitigation or ratification, with the absence of guarantees that guarantee the rights of the accused.

On his Facebook page, Bayoumi continued by saying that the constitution guarantees the defendants to appear before trials of several degrees, where the verdict is followed by an appeal procedure and then a cassation of the verdict, which does not happen in exceptional trials that took place under emergency.

Bayoumi believed that detainees who were not referred to trials benefit from the emergency abolition positively by appearing before normal, not exceptional, trials, but the cancellation will not speed up their release from detention, given that their detention is renewed according to a law that approved the extension of pretrial detention for two years, and they are not imprisoned according to the emergency law.

In a related context, the head of the Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, Nasser Amin, said that the exceptional measures provided for by the emergency law, such as placing restrictions on the freedom of people to meet or demonstrate, or censoring newspapers, publications and the media, or evacuating some places or curfews in some places. , will remain in effect.

In press statements, Amin explained that the exceptional measures will remain in force not under the emergency law, but under other laws that have been approved, such as: demonstrations, organizing the press and media, combating terrorism, and terrorist entities, as well as executive decisions issued by the President of the Republic or the Prime Minister, such as His decision, on October 4, to impose additional measures in Sinai based on the anti-terrorism law.

He added that this is a legalization for the continued imposition of the state of emergency, and that the authority has, in the past years, dumped the articles of the exceptional emergency law into a permanent set of laws.

Huge Powers

Article 154 of the Egyptian constitution, approved in 2014, stipulates that declaring a state of emergency in the country takes place in accordance with Emergency Law No. (162) issued in 1958.

The law authorized the armed forces and the police to take the necessary measures to confront the dangers of terrorism, maintain security throughout the country, protect public and private property, and save the lives of citizens.

The emergency law gives the President of the Republic the right to take exceptional measures, including enabling the army to impose security, restricting the freedom of people in meeting, moving and passing in certain places or times, referring the accused to state security courts, and curfews in some areas.

It also grants the concerned agencies the right to monitor all types of messages, and to monitor newspapers, bulletins, publications, editorials, drawings and all means of expression, publicity and advertisement before they are published, and to seize and confiscate them and close their printing places.

According to the law, the cases that must be relied upon for imposing an emergency include a state of war or a situation threatening the outbreak of war, the occurrence of internal disturbances, public disasters, or the spread of an epidemic, which means that public security in the territory of the Republic or areas of it are at risk.

The law also gives the president and the government the power to determine the dates for opening and closing public shops, confiscating any movable or real estate, ordering the imposition of guards on companies and institutions, evacuating or isolating some areas, regulating means of transportation, and limiting and specifying transportation between different regions.

Extension

Between renewal and extension, over the past five years, human rights demands continued to abolish the law that gives wide powers to the security services.

This time was supposed to be the 19th time that the state of emergency has been extended for another 3 months, under Sisi's rule.

The imposition of the state of emergency came after the targeting of two churches in Alexandria and Tanta (north) in 2017, which resulted in the death and injury of dozens, and since then it has been renewed every 3 months with the approval of Parliament.

The law gives the President of the Republic the right to declare a state of emergency after taking the opinion of the Council of Ministers, with obligating him to submit it later, within a period not exceeding 7 days, to the House of Representatives and the approval of most members of the Council to pass it, and the President of the Republic is the one who declares the state of emergency and announces its end.

The law restricts the continuation of the state of emergency for a period not exceeding 3 months, and that it may only be renewed for a similar period after the approval of two-thirds of the people’s representatives, to expire if Parliament refuses to approve it.

Opponents say that the government was extending the state of emergency through a legal trick that violates the spirit of the constitution and the law, which is declaring the emergency a few days after the end of the second three months, as if declaring the emergency again and not extending it.

Cassation lawyer Issam al-Islambouli considered that the decisions to extend the emergency more than twice in violation of the constitution constitute “fraud of the constitution.”

Islambouli added in press statements that "leaving one day after the end of the state of emergency and then re-declaring it again is a kind of fraud, and this situation may continue and be a sword wielding rights and freedoms."

He stressed that when the constitutional legislator wanted to set a time limit for emergency of 3 months that could be extended for another 3, it was aimed at "not maintaining the conditions that preceded the revolution when the state of emergency continued for nearly 30 years."

History of emergency

In its modern history, Egypt has known the state of emergency as martial law. It was initiated by the British colonialists in 1914, then the 1923 constitution was issued, which made the declaration and abolition of the state in the hands of the king, with parliamentary oversight over it.

In the Second World War between 1939 and 1943, martial law was imposed again in the country, then abolished to be re-imposed with the entry of the Egyptian army into Palestine against the Zionist gangs in 1948.

Following the events of the Cairo fire in January 1952, martial law was imposed again, and continued until army officers moved on July 23, 1952 to overthrow King Farouk, and it remained under its name “martial law”, before it changed for the first time to its current name. State of Emergency” with the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956.

Egypt entered a state of emergency extended for 13 years, after the June 1967 war, even 18 months before the assassination of the late President Anwar Sadat. Soon, as happened with Sadat, when he canceled it in his late days.

The renewal of the emergency immediately after the revolution was characterized by being conducted for short periods, and the first application of the state of emergency was after the demonstrators stormed the headquarters of the Israeli embassy in Cairo in September 2011, and it continued until May of the following year, when the military council - then ruling the country - prepared to hand over power for civilians after the first presidential elections in 2012.

During the year of the late President Mohamed Morsi's rule of the country, he was forced to partially impose a state of emergency in the cities of the Canal in the east, after violent events in the region on the anniversary of the revolution, and its imposition lasted for one month.

Following the dispersal of the Rab’a sit-in in August 2013, interim President Adly Mansour imposed a state of emergency for a period of one month, during which the state was applied, as the legal texts say, and sometimes harshly, by closing shops in the evening and preventing movement and movement in the streets at specific times, and expanding Arresting citizens on suspicion, which did not happen when it was applied again in Egypt, with the exception of the areas inflamed by violence in the Sinai in the east.